[John Rofrano]

> Well I see that I do NOT have the PRO version so that’s why my resolution can’t go any higher

Yea it’s really important that you tell people that you are using Movie Studio. Simply calling is Vegas confuses everyone. You do not need the PRO version, you just need the Movie Studio Platinum version. That is the Movie Studio version that supports HD.

> Then I Rendered the video as MainConcept MPEG-2 with the template DVD NTSC

This is what’s causing the problem. The DVD NTSC template is 4:3. You need to use the DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream template which is 16:9. That will get the results you are looking for. You will have to render your audio separately as a WAV file. Give it the same name as the video file and DVD Architect will automatically recognise it as the audio for the video.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

I have the CX12 you were asking about and the images are great in day-light. Really impressive and I can highly recommend it for what it is. Low-light is a whole other thing with ALL of these small CCD/CMOS cameras. That’s really the thing. As Douglas said, it’s not whether they have 1 or 3 but how large are the sensors. The smaller the sensor and higher the pixel count, the worse low light sensitivity due to pixel size. So my Sony my HDR-CX12 does not compare to my HVR-A1U which doesn’t compare to my HVR-Z1U, but in day-light you can intercut all of these HD cameras fairly well.

What made me choose the Sony CX12 over the Canon was the manual dial on the front. I’m a big fan of hardware knobs and dials and there is a dial on the front with a button that you can push to cycle the dial between manual Focus, Exposure, AE Shift, & WB Shift. This is similar to the exposure dial on the front of my Z1 and I love not having to play with the menus for these basic functions which are now at my fingertips.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Do not alter the audio in your Vegas project to make it louder. There is probably nothing wrong with it. The audio is low because of the AC3 profile that is used by default when you render separate a AC3 file. In the Render template open the Custom properties. On the Audio Service tab under Dialog normalization the default is -27 dB, change it to -30 dB (I find that -31 dB is sometimes too loud but try it and see). Then on the Preprocessing tab change both the Line mode profile and RF mode profile to None. This will let the true volume of your project through and not apply these profiles to it.

As for a final mastering sheen, I would use a mastering tool like iZotope Ozone 3 on the master audio bus. This will affect all of the audio in your project and let you give it some compression and widening. If you want to stick with Vegas tools try the Wave Hammer Surround FX with the Master for 16-bit preset and tweak from there.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

If it’s not a GO-HD file, open the file in the Quicktime player and use Ctrl+I to Show the Movie Inspector. Look at what Format the file is in. This will tell you what codec is being used. Chances are this codec is not installed on your PC. You’ll need to find it and install it.

I would start with the CD’s that came with your camera. Most people ignore them but chances are, everything you need to support your camera is on them. If not, go to the manufacturer’s web site and look in the downloads section. Don’t. under any circumstance, install one of the “all-codecs” packages that are floating around the Internet. They will just mess your computer up and could very likely contain spyware and Trojans. Just find the one codec you need and install it.

After all that it is still possible that the audio is in a format that Vegas doesn’t support (like AC3). In this case you may have to convert the audio to another format that Vegas can edit.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Hi Curtis and welcome to the pasture. Glad to hear at least that cows made it home safely during your render. 😉

As for your aspect problem, you need to keep everything widescreen from start to finish. This means create your Vegas project using a widescreen template like the HDV 720-30p (1280×720, 29.970 fps) if you are using NTSC or the 25p if you are PAL or 23.976 if you shot in 24p mode. Likewise when you render, use the MainConcept MPEG-2 setting with the HDV 720-30p or appropriate template for your fps. This will keep everything in the 16:9 aspect. When viewed on a standard TV it should be full screen side-to-side with black bars top and bottom and on an HDTV it will fill the entire screen.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

My GeForce 8600 only has 256mb of RAM. Performance is OK but I’m just looking for more compatibility and an overall performance boost in all of the 3D applications I use which includes Boris BLUE/RED, Cinema 4D XL, Hexagon 2.5, Carrara 6 Pro, Vue 6, MatchMover 4 Pro, & After Effects CS4 so it’s not just for use with BLUE. Vue 6 is particularly slow for me, perhaps I should ask on their forums. I’m not using Maya or 3DMax which is your typical user of Quadro cards so I’m kinda on the fence as to whether it will help in videography 3D work.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> PAR 1.000 worked. Thanks

Great! I was composing an answer to your other posts while you posted this so let me take you through the anwsers anyway. 😉

> So multiple formats are showing it 4:3. My video player is (VLC media player) and my compression sofware it. So if all these mediums are showing it 4:3, then it must be.

No, it might mean that all of those players are clueless as to what pixel aspect ratio is because they are PC players where 1 pixel always equals 1 pixel. So they are showing you your video with a PAR 1.000 and ignoring the PAR of 1.3333. This is why I asked.

> John, should I outpost to 1920×1080 when I as shooting in 1440x1080ix12

1440 * 1.3333 = 1920. If the players you are using do not understand PAR then you have no choice but to convert to a PAR of 1.000 which means 1920×1080. It’s just two different ways of arriving at the same resolution.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

What makes you think the video is coming out 4:3? Have you added it back to the Vegas timeline and checked the properties to make sure the PAR of 1.3333 is being recognized? What Quicktime codec are you using? You could always render to 1920×1080 which uses square pixels (PAR 1.000).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Peter,

Thanks. This one, however, was operator error on my part. In Vista 64 I had the display mode set to High and in XP I had it set to Draft. 🙁 When I changed Vista 64 to Draft it use the GPU to immediately animate the graphic. Sorry ’bout that.

I would still appreciate advice on the Quadro FX 1700 vs GeForce 8600 GTS. I’ve posted about this before because I’ve been thinkin’ about this ever since NAB this year and I keep getting conflicting information about whether I will see any performance improvement. It’s hard to compare specs because NVIDIA doesn’t report the same measurements for the two cards (probably on purpose).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Render to one of the DVD Architect widescreen video stream templates (either PAL or NTSC depending on where you live) and that will create a 16:9 MPEG2 file. Render the audio separately as Digital Dolby AC3. The letterboxing for 4:3 will be added by the set-top DVD player when the DVD is played back. You don’t have to do anything special.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com